Ant woodlouse
The ant woodlouse is a tiny white woodlouse that lives inside ant nests. It is oval, with short feelers, and it is blind. In the total darkness of an ant hill, it does not need eyes at all.
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Fun facts
It lives together with ants, mostly yellow meadow ants, black garden ants and red ants.
It goes wherever its ants go, so it lives in the same places as they do.
It is only about 4 to 5 millimetres long.
Britain and Ireland are the farthest northwest it lives.
Most asked questions about Ant woodlouse
?Where does the ant woodlouse live?
Inside ant nests, in Europe, North Africa and Turkey.
?What does the ant woodlouse eat?
Ant droppings and mould inside the nest.
?Why is the ant woodlouse white?
It lives in the dark inside ant hills, where it does not need colour or eyes.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Platyarthrus hoffmannseggii
- Group
- Woodlice
- Family
- Platyarthridae
- Classification
- Malacostraca > Isopoda > Platyarthridae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania, North America
Where the facts come from
- Platyarthrus hoffmannseggii (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Andy Murray. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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